Please note: The Hotline will have a new home, and new url, starting Monday. The address will be posted here. Thanks in advance for your understanding.

We touched on several matchups Wednesday with my Four Questions for Week Four post. One game I purposefully did not addressed in much detail, in part because I was saving it for this space, is the Cal-Arizona State duel.

The relevant number for me is not Cal’s national ranking in run defense (126th) or ASU’s national ranking in pass defense (128th, which is dead last). Nope, it’s this:

119

That’s the combined point total in the highest scoring conference game in Pac-12 history: Cal 60-59 over Washington State two years ago. It will be in jeopardy late (late) Saturday night.

Remember Oregon’s crazy, 61-55 triple-overtime victory over ASU last season? This weekend’s tangle in Tempe could make that seem like amateur hour.

Chris Dufresne, the longtime national college football columnist for the L.A. Times and co-founder of the TMGcollegesports.com, joined me for episode 2 of the podcast.

* We addressed the SEC as a landing spot for discarded quarterbacks from other Power 5 conferences.

* We looked at the impetus for Big 12 expansion (that would be Oklahoma’s loose-lipped president, David Boren) and the state of Texas under Charlie Strong.

* And yes, we hit on several Pac-12 topics, including a deep dive into the wayward culture of USC football, from the impact of the sanctions and all the coaching changes to the university’s misguided insistence on hiring from within.

As Dufresne also noted: The last decade might have unfolded differently if the Trojans had converted on fourth-and-two against Texas.

* Please note: The Hotline will have a new home, and new url, starting Monday. The address will be posted here. Thanks in advance for your understanding // …

Welcome to a new feature here on the Hotline, pegged to the start of conference play en masse.

Still to be determined is whether the number of questions matches the number of the week. (The thought of 11 questions for Week 11 seems a tad daunting, but that’s for another day.)

Starting with the Sam Darnold Experience on Friday night in Salt Lake City, I’ll be watching for answers to these questions:

Are the L.A. schools tough enough?

On the surface, that might seem ridiculous. USC and UCLA, with their tradition and recruiting base, shouldn’t have a toughness issue. (If managed to maximum efficiency, they should not have any deep, structural issues relative to their Pac-12 competition.)

But they do have a toughness issue, and their opponents this weekend, Stanford and Utah, are the most physical teams in the conference.

Quick thought on the landscape before we dig in: My, how it has changed.

The first-half schedule doesn’t seem so brutal, does it?

We figured USC-UCLA-Washington-Washington State-Notre Dame would be the ultimate test for Stanford and its revamped line and new quarterback. Four of the five were ranked in the preseason poll, and WSU was justifiably on the fringe.

A few weeks later …

* USC is 1-2 and has been outclassed by both Power 5 opponents.
* UCLA is 2-1 and muddling along.
* Washington State is 1-2 with an FCS loss.
* Notre Dame is 1-2 with major issues defensively.

None of them are ranked. Combined record: 5-7.

Only Washington has matched its preseason hype, but that could simply be the cupcake schedule; we have no idea if the Huskies are truly a title contender.

Listen hard enough, and you can hear the other Power 5 conferences revel in the schadenfreude.

Theme of the week (on-the-field version): Make room for Daddy.

The Pac-12 dropped two head-to-head duels with the Big Ten and is now just 1-3 against the B1G, which sure looks like the nation’s best conference (Ohio State over Oklahoma, Wisconsin over LSU, Nebraska over Oregon, Michigan State over Notre Dame).

*** I moved Ohio State into the No. 1 position after its convincing victory at Oklahoma — a true road win, as opposed to many of the other impressive victories thus far, which have largely come at home or at neutral sites.

As some readers might recall, Ohio State is my pick to win the national title and, as a result, was my preseason No. 1. (My preseason poll is a projection of finish.)

I dropped the Buckeyes out of that position once the results began rolling in: They played two cupcakes and didn’t deserve the top spot ahead of teams that registered quality wins.

The three-touchdown win in Norman prompted a reconfiguration … to the original configuration.

*** Louisville jumped into the No. 2 spot, all the way from N. 19 last week, after dismantling Florida State (in Louisville).

Yes, that’s a big jump, but it was a big win and big jumps are necessary to weed out preseason bias.